Categories
3D Printing Release_Candidate

Join EFF’s Efforts to Keep 3D Printing Open

EFF and the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society are working together to use this new process to challenge patent applications that particularly threaten growing 3D printing technologies. As a first step, we are evaluating 3D printing patent applications currently pending before the Patent Office to identify potential target applications. We need your help! If you know of any applications covering 3D printing technology that you think should be challenged, please let us know by emailing 3Dprinting@eff.org (and also point us to any relevant prior art you might know about).

via Join EFF’s Efforts to Keep 3D Printing Open | Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Categories
LibraryBox

LibraryBox v1.5 website relaunch

While this blog has been quiet, I’ve been working away at a redesign of the LibraryBox website. Said redesign is now live, all new content, and most importantly, instructions for how to build a v1.5 LibraryBox. These instructions are far, far easier than the v1 instructions, and I took at lot of time listening to feedback about the Project, trying to find the right tone for the site. What I wanted to do was try and tell the story of why I think LibraryBox is potentially an important project. I think I managed that.

Go take a look, let me know what you think!

Categories
Drones FutureTech Release_Candidate

Robot Cooperation

Categories
FutureTech Internet of Things Release_Candidate Wearable computing

Memoto Lifelogging Camera by Memoto — Kickstarter

I’ve been looking for a good answer for lifelogging for awhile, and have been anticipating the point at which the technology drops in price enough to make this possible for the average consumer. Google Glasses is the high-end answer, and this may just be the sort of thing that emerges at the low end.

The Memoto camera is a tiny camera and GPS that you clip on and wear. It’s an entirely new kind of digital camera with no controls. Instead, it automatically takes photos as you go. The Memoto app then seamlessly and effortlessly organizes them for you.

via Memoto Lifelogging Camera by Memoto — Kickstarter.

Categories
Makerspace Release_Candidate

Mothership HackerMoms

A new kickstarted hackerspace in Berkeley, CA where, as they say:

We started our non-profit organization in April 2012 because traditional hackerspaces don’t really have safe spaces for babies and young children – or, consequently, their mothers. Our mission is to give creative moms the time and space to explore DIY craft and design, hacker/maker culture, entrepreneurship, and all manner of creative expression – with childcare.

But I’m still going to back it, as the more women we have in STEM-focused fields the better off we will be.

via Mothership HackerMoms: The first women’s hackerspace! by Sho Sho Smith — Kickstarter.

Categories
Drones Release_Candidate

Everyone Who Wants a Drone Will Have One Soon

Semi-autonomous flying things are already available to the general public and will continue to become more available. Yet our intuitive privacy settings, our security forces, and our sense of property all assume humans on the ground.

Let me posit this: Drones will make traditional fences as obsolete as gunpowder and cannons made city walls.

via Everyone Who Wants a Drone Will Have One Soon – Alexis C. Madrigal – The Atlantic.

Categories
Brand_New_World Uncategorized

Eliza & Granny Jo



Olive Hill & Carter Caves 136, originally uploaded by griffey.

We don’t post here much anymore, as Eliza is keeping us busier than ever and posting here has taken a backseat. But this was too good to not mention, as seeing Eliza interacting with her great-grandmother was one of the best things I’ve seen all year.

Categories
3D Printing FutureTech Open Hardware Release_Candidate

3-D Printer Company says “not with our machine”

The WikiWeapons/Printable Gun project seems to be drawing the ire of not only one of the largest 3D printer manufacturers in the US:

Stratasys’s legal counsel wrote back: “It is the policy of Stratasys not to knowingly allow its printers to be used for illegal purposes. Therefore, please be advised that your lease of the Stratasys uPrint SE is cancelled at this time and Stratasys is making arrangements to pick up the printer,” stated the letter, which Wilson posted to Defense Distributed’s website. The next day, contractors hired by the company arrived at Wilson’s apartment in an Enterprise rental van and took the printer.

…but also the ATF:

Wilson visited the ATF field office in Austin on Monday to ask about the legal and regulatory issues surrounding the Wiki Weapons project, he tells Danger Room. Instead, he was brought into a room, questioned and was told the agency was preparing to visit his apartment this afternoon for an “investigation,” he says. He added that the ATF believes he’s not broken any laws, and that the agency believes 3-D printed guns fall into a regulatory gray area, but that he still needs to get licensed if he’s to manufacture a weapon.

This is going to be really, really interesting. Is it illegal to post instructions for a printable weapon? Where do those lines fall? The next 5 years is going to make these sorts of questions very troublesome…and just wait another 10 years until molecular-level printing is happening and see what that does for drug laws.

via 3-D Printer Company Seizes Machine From Desktop Gunsmith | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Categories
FutureTech Release_Candidate Wearable computing

Augmented Reality Welding Mask

Incredible augmented reality technology that has real-world, everyday use: use cameras and computers to make seen what can’t been seen by the normal eye. In this case, it’s welding that benefits, but there is an obvious extension into many other fields.

As computers become even more powerful, it will be possible to do similar real-time HDR image processing with little more than a smartphone. There will be a point down the road where humans will be able to manufacture cheap and lightweight glasses that are capable of providing better imaging than our own eyes can manage. This will be one of several points where true augmentation of human capabilities begins — the very definition of cyborg. It’s not science-fiction, it’s the future.

via Augmented Reality Welding Mask With 100 Million to 1 Contrast RatioRoad to Virtual Reality.

Categories
Gadgets Library Issues LibraryBox presentation

The Future of Things: How everywhere changes everything

This morning I was privileged to give a keynote address to the Homewood Public Library in Homewood, IL for their Staff Development day. It was the first time I gave this particular talk, and it was a distillation of an essay that I’ve been trying to write for some time. The thrust of both is that the technological changes coming over the next 5-10 years are likely to be so transformative that we (libraries and librarians) need to be thinking now, hard, about how we prepare for them. How do libraries continue to measure our value when our historical measurements become useless? How can we use open hardware to prepare ourselves for these newly-needed measurements? How will the continued and unavoidable drop in price, increase in processing, and lessening of power consumption of hardware be useful for libraries?

I don’t have lots of answers. But I think these are the beginnings of some interesting questions.

So here’s my slide deck from the presentation. I hope to have the essay/post/whatever it ends up being done soon. I really want to start talking about this with other librarians.

The Future of Things from Jason Griffey